I have recently finished my CELTA course and had planned to find teaching work in Italy in September. However, on hearing about the level of pay and the precariousness of finding full-time work immediately, I have decided to stay in my (non-teaching) current contract to save some more money and learn some Italian and head out to Italy in January.

Can you tell me if there are likely to be jobs available starting in January?

Also, I was going to head out to Bologna and Florence for a week in mid/end September to drop off my CV and enquire about work in January, etc. Is this a good idea?

There's always a chance that there'll be some teaching work in January. But I don't think anyone can give you a cast-iron guarantee. By all means drop off your CV in September, but don't expect schools to be able to tell you if they'll be looking for teachers again in January. It all depends - whether they get new students, whether their existing teachers drop out...

At one point or another you're going to have to bite the bullet. I quite understand that you're being put off by the low pay and precarious conditions, but these won't go away in September, next January, or next September either. Bear in mind that if schools suddenly have work in January, you're going to have to be here to take it up. There's also the chance that even if there is work in January, it's not going to be as much as if you had started in September. So a plan to have as much in the way of savings as possible is a good one.

The pay isn't great in Italy but it's about the same as the rest of central and southern Europe. Haven't met a teacher here who's living in poverty or anything like that. Half of the schools will provide or arrange accommodation for you and whatever school you're at should give you €700-800 a month spare after rent in the north and €500-600 in the south. At a minimum. Plus if you're in the south you may get more because most schools won't bother with taxes and you may be able to negotiate rent more.

There's always a chance that there'll be some teaching work in January. But I don't think anyone can give you a cast-iron guarantee. By all means drop off your CV in September, but don't expect schools to be able to tell you if they'll be looking for teachers again in January. It all depends - whether they get new students, whether their existing teachers drop out...

At one point or another you're going to have to bite the bullet. I quite understand that you're being put off by the low pay and precarious conditions, but these won't go away in September, next January, or next September either. Bear in mind that if schools suddenly have work in January, you're going to have to be here to take it up. There's also the chance that even if there is work in January, it's not going to be as much as if you had started in September. So a plan to have as much in the way of savings as possible is a good one.

Good point. It's more likely that January work in Europe is more due to the previous teacher doing a bunk during Christmas rather than an influx of new year resolution students. Not always, but most of the time people don't do a flip for positive reasons.

It's more likely that January work in Europe is more due to the previous teacher doing a bunk during Christmas rather than an influx of new year resolution students.

Well, you know, it happens for all sorts of reasons. True - I'd hire the majority of teachers in September, and only a couple or so for the odd project in January, but not many teachers did a bunk after the xmas holidays. Those that did generally had good reasons to (and nothing to do with the work / conditions we offered). When you have lots of corporate teaching (as we did) you're quite likely to have new courses starting up in Jan for budgeting reasons.

Conversely, you can also get students cancelling, meaning there's less rather than more work.

I've now got some appointments set up with a few schools in Bologna and Florence in the next few weeks and I will go door-knocking on the others, so fingers crossed! I just need to do some research on the schools and try and find out what they're like.

Hopefully there'll be some sort of 'teacher plague' in December so that there will be some posts free in January!

Can I ask which school you worked for in Rome only I'm in touch with a couple so I was wondering if you had an idea as to what they're like?